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CATCH
YOUR
DE
AT
H
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Don’t miss the previous Ruby Redfort adventures:
Ruby Redfort: Look Into My Eyes
Ruby Redfort: Take Your Last Breath
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LAUREN CHILD fi rst introduced the character of Ruby Redfort in her three award-winning, bestselling
CLARICE BEAN novels. Since then she has been inundated with letters from fans asking for the RUBY REDFORT books.
And it must have worked, because this is number three in the series.
Lauren is also the creator of the phenomenally successful CHARLIE AND LOLA books, as well as Associate Producer on
the TV show of the same name. She has sold millions of books around the world and won many prizes, including the Smarties Prize (four times), the Kate Greenaway Medal
and the Red House Children’s Book Award.
The RUBY REDFORT series features codes and puzzles created with the help of super-geek consultant Marcus du Sautoy,
Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and all-round genius.
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CATCH YOUR DEATH
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First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2013
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
For Ruby Redfort games, puzzles, videos and more, visit:
www.rubyredfort.com
Visit Lauren Child at www.milkmonitor.com
1
Copyright © Lauren Child 2013
Series design and illustrations by David Mackintosh
ISBN: 978-0-00-733410-0
Printed and bound in the UK by
Clays Ltd, St Ives Plc
Conditions of sale
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which is it published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
FSC is a non-profit international organisation established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests. Products carrying the FSC label are independently certified to assure consumers that they come from forests that are managed to meet the social, economic and ecological needs of present and future generations, and other controlled sources.
Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment atwww.harpercollins.co.uk/green
™
™
™
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‘Smell is one of the most
powerful triggers of the
human memory.
An odour is a portal to the
past, instantly transporting
the smeller back to some long
forgotten time. The conscious
mind might be unaware of
the memory, but, just as
smelling salts can rouse a
person from a dead faint, so
smell rouses the subconscious
and awakens the dormant
memory.’
DR DAVIDSON WALTER F MACKINTOSH
PHD CBE, Ulwin University, co-writer of the
highly regarded textbook, Nasal Passages
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10
THE GIRL OPENED HER EYES AND BLINKED UP AT THE
SKY. From where she lay, curled on the pine-needle fl oor, she
could see pure blue, vivid behind a latt icework of black branches.
Sensing that she was alone, the girl sat up and looked around.
She listened for footsteps, voices, but heard no human sound
at all, just the hot lazy birds and insects buzzing and zithering.
The picnic things were still laid out and a chain of ants was busy
deconstructing the left overs. She picked up the novel which lay
where her father had sat, The Abandoned One – A Thriller, and
she began to read.
But an hour later and almost halfway through, her parents
still had not returned. Had there been some emergency? Was her
father looking for help? Her mother waving at passing planes?
Had they both been devoured by bears or some other wild thing –
some terrible beast that lurked in the faraway forest? Or had they
simply forgott en her, left her here? Her four-year-old imagination
The Abandoned One
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began to run wild, egged on by the pages of the book.
She calmed herself, took deep breaths, inhaling the forest
aroma. The scent of the pine was a comfort, reassuring and
familiar, and her common sense drift ed back to her. She was
aware that the most likely explanation was probably the actual
one: her parents had gone to the river to fetch water and had got
sidetracked.
She waited, stayed exactly where she was, remembering this
was the advice given by the yellow survival manual that sat on
top of her father’s bureau. But time ticked on and night began
to fall and no one came back. She stood up and pushed her feet
into her boots, tying them carefully, doubling the knot so they
would not come undone.
She pulled on her red waterproof mac with its sensible hood,
just in case the weather broke – in the wilderness you could never
be sure. She took the winding path down to where the river must
certainly be, and as she walked she breathed deeply, fi lling her
tiny lungs with pure forest air, and as she inhaled she smelled a
smell so delicious, so like perfume, she couldn’t help but follow
where her nose wanted to lead her.
She left the path and twisted through the dark trees and
the tangles of briars and fallen branches, and came to a place
where the moon could reach if only the cloud would let it. Ahead
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12
of her was deathly dark, and so it was with great caution that
she stepped into black. As she did so, she felt her coat snag on
something sharp; she pulled, but it pulled back – the tiny girl
now caged in thorns.
Trapped.
She sensed something ahead of her, quite near. Something
alive, something dangerous, something bad. The cloud moved,
the moon shone and the girl gasped. For barely three feet away,
staring at her with the palest blue eyes and the sharpest glistening
teeth, was a wolf.
The girl stood very still, watching the beast, its gaze fi xed
upon her. She waited; she closed her eyes to block it out. Her
heart beating fast and her breathing shallow and unsteady. She
listened to the creature and heard the same sound, the same
panic, the child and the wolf both locked in fear.
Slowly, the girl began to unpick herself from the brambles,
pulling the thorns one by one from her legs, twisting out of her
litt le hooded coat until it was all the briars could claim. She
stepped out of the thicket and saw what held the wolf; it was
trapped in an ugly mouth of iron teeth. Her four-year-old instinct
took hold: it told her to free the desperate wild thing and so,
picking up a rock, she struck the trap over and over until it gave,
and the bleeding paw of the wolf was released.
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For a moment the beast looked at the girl, its eyes in hers, hers
in its, and for just a second they knew each other’s thoughts.
In the distance a voice called out, two voices. ‘Ruby, Ruby!
Where are you?’
The wolf held her gaze just a second longer. Its beautiful eyes,
crystal blue and ringed with violet, gleamed; then it turned and
melted into the darkness of the forest.
And the wolf, like a wisp of smoke, was gone.
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14
An Ordinary Kid
WHEN RUBY WAS SIX, she was entered by the Junior Chess
Club, known as The Pawns, in a local city tournament. Game
one, she found herself drawn against Mr Karocovskey. Not the
opponent anyone would wish to be sitt ing opposite for their very
fi rst public game, at least not unless that person wanted to get
home early so they could watch Tiny Toons. Mr Karocovskey had
been a big champion in his heyday and had played chess against
many famous Russians. Now he was an old man with a sharp
brain, not as sharp as it had been, but he was still a grandmaster
and the best chess player in the state.
Ruby looked at him across the table. He had a nice face – his
eyes, watery and grey, looked like they might have seen the woes
of the world. This man knew what it was to yearn for something
and struggle to get it.
She could see what he was going to do ten moves ahead.
She lost the game skilfully. Mr Karocovskey was very generous
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about his win; he smiled kindly, shook her hand and thanked
her for being such a challenging opponent. He was a gracious
winner, a good sport.
Seventeen-year-old Kaspar Peterson smirked. He wasn’t
surprised she’d lost: he didn’t see there was any way this squirt
of a six-year-old girl was going to win against a champion – she
wasn’t going to win against anyone. Ruby Redfort challenged
Kaspar to a game. He casually accepted.
She beat him in fi ve easy moves. He was an ungracious
loser, a bad sport.
Ruby had been reluctant to beat old Mr Karocovskey; she
had no such qualms about thrashing Kaspar Peterson.
Some several years later…
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Chapter 1.
A positive mental attitude
16
‘THE ONLY THING TO FEAR IS THE BLUE ALASKAN WOLF,
which by the way doesn’t exist.’
These words were spoken by Samuel Colt, a former special
agent turned environmentalist. Now he had taken up work as a
Spectrum survival trainer. He was a tall, well-built man, gett ing
on in years, but still in good shape, the kind of guy you wanted
to have on side, the kind of guy you would be relieved to have
show up, and the kind of guy you would hope to see standing on
the horizon if you found yourself lost – unless, of course, he was
the reason you had tried to get lost in the fi rst place. If so, your
heart might sink more than a litt le.
Colt had a large grey moustache and shoulder-length hair.
He wore a wide-brimmed hat, and clothes that gave him the
look of a trapper – he wouldn’t have looked out of place had he
travelled back in time a hundred years. He had seen it all and
survived it all and he knew what he was talking about. There
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17
was nothing unfriendly about Sam Colt, a litt le straight talking
perhaps, but never cruel.
‘Cruelty has no place in the wilderness. You sometimes need
to be single-minded, tough as an old lasso, but you don’t gott a be
cruel.’ He believed in that. ‘You don’t kill unless you have to and
if you have to you make it quick.’
‘Blue wolves you don’t gott a concern yourselves with,’ he
continued, ‘but regular wolves? Be prepared for those fellas. My
best advice: avoid them. You don’t seek ’em out, you don’t feed
’em, you don’t pet ’em, you don’t look ’em in the eye. That goes
double for bears; bears are a whole lot more trouble than wolves
and wolves are trouble enough.’
‘Who’s going to be dumb enough to feed a bear or a wolf?’
whispered trainee Lowe.
‘You’d be surprised,’ said Colt.
Samuel Colt, among all his other fi ne att ributes, had very
acute hearing and trainee Lowe was somewhat taken aback.
‘You don’t clean up aft er a meal, that’s feeding; you’re leaving
a trail from him to you and, I assure you, you don’t want to do
that.’
‘But what if you do run into a pack of wolves?’ asked trainee
Dury. ‘What then?’
Today was a theory day and the trainees were indoors, taking
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18 RU BY R E DF O RT
notes and asking questions. There was a lot of studying to do,
though Colt’s job was mainly to teach the practical stuff . He
preferred that: being outdoors was natural – inside, not so good.
Sam Colt scratched his head and sighed. ‘If you should fi nd
yourself in this predicament, then there are a few ways you might
handle things.’ He scanned the trainees to see who might know.
‘Redfort? Give me two pieces of good advice.’
Ruby leaned back in her chair. ‘If you’re able to, you wanna
get up a tree prett y darned fast, but don’t count on the wolves
leaving you to enjoy the view; they’ve been known to sit it out,
waiting for people to come down. Crocodiles behave the same way,
though if you have a wolf on your tail then you’re unlikely to have
a crocodile aft er you, so I guess you can tick that worry off your
list.’ She paused before adding, ‘Only run for it if you’re certain
you’re gonna reach that tree before the wolf reaches you. Running
gets it all charged up – brings out the hunting instinct.’
Colt nodded. ‘That’s correct.’
Ruby knew all this from the many books she had read over
the years. She had writt en up some of these survival tips, the ones
she considered particularly useful, in a pea-green notebook. Most
of them she now knew off by heart and, as Colt went through the
various dos and don’ts of outdoor survival, Ruby found herself
mentally replaying what she had learned.
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19CAT C H YO U R DE AT H
SURVIVAL SUGGESTION #7:
Dealing with dangerous wildlife
1. WOLVES
SURVIVAL RULE 1:
Keep a clean camp. Wolves have an exceptional sense of
smell: they can smell prey from up to 1.75 miles.
SURVIVAL RULE 2:
Keep a fi re burning. Wolves don’t like fi re.
SURVIVAL RULE 3:
Do not run. Unless you are sure you can run at over thirty
miles an hour (no one has yet).
SURVIVAL RULE 4:
Stick with the group. Wolves are less likely to att ack if you
are in a large group than if you are alone, so don’t wander
off by yourself.
‘There are many theories about these creatures,’ Colt
continued. ‘Some say, in places where they’ve been aggressively
hunted, wolves remain wary of man, preferring to avoid any
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20 RU BY R E DF O RT
human interaction at all. Others say that the wolf is a ruthless
predator and will att ack if it gets any opportunity. Either way, it
don’t matt er. My advice is the same: keep away from wolves and
try to make sure they keep away from you.’
Ruby was thinking back to her own wolf encounter a long
time ago on Wolf Paw Mountain: she had not followed any kind of
advice, but had done the very worst thing as far as the textbooks
were concerned, yet she had lived to tell the tale – how, she had
no idea.
Unlike the other trainee agents, Ruby Redfort was not
sleeping over at Mountain Ranch Camp. This was due to the fact
that, unlike them, she was still att ending Junior High. This made
her task a litt le more complicated than anyone else’s: she was still
expected to make it to class each school day, get her homework
in on time and show up every aft ernoon for survival school.
To make it more complicated still, no one, not the school, not
her family or friends, was aware that she had been recruited by
the secret agency known to only a few insiders (and a handful
of evil geniuses) as Spectrum.
The division Ruby worked for, Spectrum 8, was run by LB,
a woman who took no nonsense and no prisoners. She was not
someone who tolerated mistakes or stupidity, and mistakes as
far as LB was concerned were stupidity. For this reason it was
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21CAT C H YO U R DE AT H
credit to Ruby that, even though she had made more than one
or two errors in her short Spectrum life, she was still an agent
who had lived to tell the tale (had there been someone she was
authorised to tell it to).
It wasn’t easy, but Ruby Redfort wasn’t going to complain
about it – all she had ever wanted was to work for a secret agency,
not just as a code breaker, but as a fi eld agent, out there facing
danger and experiencing adventure. She had a lot of tests to
take before this dream would become a reality and she was
determined not to blow it.
So, every day, Ruby left school, dropping by her home before
heading to a secret location where she would get picked up by a
Spectrum agency helicopter and dropped at the mountain camp.
Every evening the helicopter would take her home again.
That night, aft er she had got home and changed back into her
regular clothes, jeans and T-shirt (this one bearing the words
trust me, I’m a doctor), Ruby went downstairs to the kitchen to
grab some dinner.
Her mother frowned a litt le when she caught sight of the
T-shirt, but decided to let it go. ‘Your hair looks nice honey,’ she
said.
‘How was school?’ asked her father.
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22 RU BY R E DF O RT
Ruby shrugged. ‘Oh, you know, schooly.’
‘Did the Evening Bark arrive yet?’ asked Brant.
‘I don’t know, I didn’t notice,’ said Ruby.
‘I’ll go see,’ he said. Brant Redfort went to the front step to
pick up the evening newspaper, the Twinford Hound (the Redforts
always referred to it as the Evening Bark because it tended to be
full of loud and sensational news).
Brant walked into the kitchen, reading the paper, his brow
a litt le furrowed.
‘Bad news?’ asked Sabina.
‘Warning of forest fi res,’ sighed Brant. ‘The mountains and
canyons are tinder dry and unless we get some rain the chances
of the forests going up in fl ames are high.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Sabina, ‘I don’t like the sound of that, not one
litt le bit.’
Brant’s face brightened. ‘Hey honey, you’re going to like the
sound of this.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Sabina, sitt ing up in her chair as if she needed
to really concentrate.
‘Melrose Dorff are having a launch.’
‘Oh fabulous!’ exclaimed Sabina. ‘What are they
launching?’
‘The Lost Perfume of Marie Antoinett e 1770,’ said Brant.
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23CAT C H YO U R DE AT H
‘It’s French.’
‘Oh, French, I like the sound of that!’
‘Didn’t I tell you that you would? Not that a whole gallon of
perfume could smell bett er than you do,’ he said, sniffi ng Sabina’s
neck.
‘Oh brother!’ mutt ered Ruby.
Brant continued reading: “Madame Swann, perfumer to the
rich and tasteful, famous for her discerning nose, has brought her
recreation of Queen Marie Antoinett e’s exclusive perfume from Paris
to the West Coast. Let Them Smell Roses, the Lost Perfume of Marie
Antoinett e 1770, will be launched at a fabulous soirée where att endees
will also be able to view some of the ill-fated Queen’s most precious
jewellery. An exciting announcement will be made on the night – it
will be strictly an invitation-only event.”
Sabina looked forlorn and then puzzled. ‘But why haven’t we
been invited?’ she said. ‘I mean we usually are.’
This was an understatement: the Redforts always were.
‘Don’t worry sweetheart. I’m sure there’ll be a logical
explanation. Maybe they haven’t mailed the invitations yet.’
‘I hope you’re right Brant. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t
get invited to this particular launch party.’
Ruby rolled her eyes, but said nothing.
Aft er she had wolfed down her supper, she went back up to
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her room. She was keen to do more reading before she turned
in for the night. She had been studying hard for the past weeks –
reading everything she could, absorbing it, digesting it and living
by it.
What she didn’t know was that it was precisely this rigid
adherence to the facts she had learned and the rules she had
made that was going to lead to her downfall.
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